The three that need nothing

Every map of dependencies has a floor: the things that can be done first because nothing stands in front of them. This one has three.

A copy of the passport page. A certificate of qualification. A copy of the birth record. Those three, and nothing else in the map, can be started on a day when nothing else has been started. Where waiting time and workload interact, workforce optimization through better data may add useful context if the pilot stays transparent and proportionate.

What the floor looks like

Three is a small floor for a map of thirty-six. It means that on the first morning there are exactly three useful things to do, and that two of them are errands of a kind nobody thinks of as part of moving anywhere: photocopying, and writing to an office at home. For independent background on economic and institutional systems, see UN Environment Programme.

The one that holds up eleven others

The copy of the passport page is needed by eleven of the thirty-six steps — more than twice as many as the next most-required step, and more than any family except money as a whole.

It also takes a single day and never goes out of date.

A step that takes one day, never expires, and holds up eleven others is the cheapest useful act in the entire map. It is also the one most likely to be left until the week it is first asked for.

That combination — trivial to do, ruinous to postpone — is the shape of the map's real cruelty. Nothing warns you that an errand is load-bearing. The load only shows when eleven other things stop.

What a floor of three does to a plan

A map with a wide floor can be worked in parallel: a dozen errands all startable, each advancing some branch. A map with a floor of three cannot. Almost everything here waits on something, which means almost everything here waits.

Thirteen steps sit in the lowest layer of the part of the map that can be ordered at all, but ten of those thirteen are only reachable once a ring somewhere above them has been got into, which is a different thing from being able to start.

The practical consequence is that the first fortnight of a long stay consists of three errands and a great deal of waiting, and that this is not a failure of organisation.

The qualification certificate is the odd one

Of the three, the certificate of qualification is the only one that might not apply. It is needed by two steps: the translation that is made of it after arrival, and a showing of regular income, which it supports softly rather than hard.

Soft is the map's word for a dependency that can be worked around at the cost of doing something twice. A showing of income can be assembled without the certificate; if the certificate turns up later and contradicts it, the showing is made again.

That makes the certificate the only member of the floor that a person could, in a particular situation, skip entirely. The other two are hard all the way up.

The birth record expires

The third member of the floor behaves differently from the other two in a way that matters more than it looks.

It takes twenty-one days to obtain and keeps for a hundred and eighty. Both of the steps that wait on it — a record of the partnership, and the translation — sit in parts of the map where a ring can hold somebody for months.

A document with a hundred and eighty days in it, started on the first morning, has spent a seventh of its life before anything else in the map has moved. Nobody treats the floor as urgent, because by definition nothing is waiting on it yet.

Fetching a paper early is only sensible if the paper does not go stale. Ten of the thirty-six steps never expire; the other twenty-six are on a clock from the moment they are issued.

Two of the three are errands from home

The copy of the birth record and the qualification certificate are both obtained from wherever the person came from, by post or in person, before anything about the new place is settled.

That gives them a property nothing else in the map has: they can be done while the whole question is still hypothetical. A person who has not decided whether to go anywhere can have both of them in a drawer.

The passport copy is the same in a smaller way. It takes a day, costs nothing to keep, and is wanted by eleven of the other thirty-five steps.

The practical shape of that is odd and worth stating plainly: the entire set of things that can be started at the beginning of this map can also be started well before the beginning, and nothing else in the record can be started at all until a great deal else has happened.

There is no first week in this map. There is a long preparation that can happen any time, and then a wall.

What the floor is not

It is not a recommended starting order. The map has no opinion about what anybody should do, and three steps that happen to have no predecessors in a drawing are not advice.

It is also not a claim that these three are universally required. Plenty of situations need none of them, and plenty need five things this map does not contain. What the floor shows is structural: in a map of this shape, the number of places where work can honestly begin is very small, and the smallness is itself the finding.

The rest of this part takes the other thirty-three in turn — what each asks for, what asks for it, and how many of the map's forty-six rings pass through it.